Best Practices: 5 Reasons to Dump Windows XP Now

Sreedhar Kajeepeta08/01/12

11 Years and Counting

Imagine if Moore's Law applied to operating systems. Microsoft's Windows XP would have proved it wrong five or six times over by now.

Windows XP, which was launched in October 2001 and has been updated with three service packs, is the most popular and longest-lasting desktop operating system so far. Around 400 million PCs (42.86% of all PCs out there) are still humming along just fine with this version of Windows, based on all network traffic recorded for July 2012 by Net Applications.

Our latest InformationWeek Windows 8 Survey of 859 business technology professionals at organizations with 500 or more employees shows 76% still have XP running on at least some of their PCs. XP still has three times the global market share of Mac OS, according to OS stats from W3Schools.com. (S5520812)